


Most Fortunate in the Timing

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV), The Time Traveller's Wife (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, Angst, Character Death, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Insecure Arthur, M/M, Magical Illness, Self-Destruction, Smut, Time Travel, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 21:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15252408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Arthur...”Arthur’s eyes widened infinitesimally, and then his face shuttered. His expression went blank and blandly polite, and he asked simply, “Do I know you?”“No,” Merlin said, his smile hesitant but distinct. “Not yet. But I’ve known you almost all my life.”-Merlin has known Arthur since he was six years old, has been in love with Arthur since he was fourteen, and has waited for Arthur almost his entire life.Arthur has been alone since he was six years old, has never wanted to let anyone like Merlin into his life, and has no idea what he'll do if he ever has to let him go.





	Most Fortunate in the Timing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lyss2011](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyss2011/gifts).



> written for [this](https://kinksofcamelot.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=456974#t456974) kinksofcamelot prompt. based off _The Time Traveler's Wife_ 2009 movie.
> 
> not beta'd, but if you are offering your services i could definitely use the help! you can pm [here](https://padraigen.livejournal.com/profile/) or my email is on my profile :)

_“_ Arthur _...”_ _  
_ _  
_ _Arthur’s eyes widened infinitesimally, and then his face shuttered. His expression went blank and blandly polite, and he asked simply, “Do I know you?”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“No,” Merlin said, his smile hesitant but distinct. “Not yet. But I’ve known you almost all my life.”_

**1**

Merlin had always been something of an oddity. He’d known it since he was five years old, when he’d saved his mum from slicing her finger whilst she was dicing peppers. Her hand had slipped and then, remarkably, the knife was no longer in her hand but a metre away, situated precariously on the countertop.

The occurrence had startled Merlin so much he’d begun to cry, and he hadn’t calmed down until his mum had sat him in her lap and explained, her voice kind, that he was a rather special child. That she had known it from when he was still a babe and she’d took a stumble down the stairs, Merlin in her arms, and they’d both come out of it miraculously unscathed.

From that point he’d started to understand why he didn’t feel so comfortable in his own skin. He felt too big for the flesh covering his bones, like something inside him was pushing, aching to get out, and he only found relief in the moments like the one when he’d stopped his mother from hurting herself.

When he was six, he learned that he wasn’t the only one who was ‘special’.

It was a bland and cloudy Monday afternoon when his mum picked him up from school and informed him she would be taking him with her to work that evening because his father wouldn’t be able to watch him. When Merlin asked why not, she only said that his father was taking a trip, and Merlin never thought to question it. He instead asked where she worked because he couldn’t recall if she’d ever said, and his mother curtly responded that she worked at a call centre.

Merlin got the feeling then that she was upset and wouldn’t want to answer anymore questions, and remained quiet for the rest of the car ride even though he wanted to ask what one did in a call centre.

Once inside the building, his mother ushered him into an empty communal room, where a sofa and a couple of chairs were set around a wooden table and farther back there were cupboards and cabinets and, Merlin saw, a tea kettle. Merlin’s mum left him in there with a quiet request that he do his coursework and  _behave_ , and that she’d come see how he was doing in a couple of hours.

For the first half hour, Merlin did as he was told. He’d pulled out his homework, pencil, and calculator from his knapsack and dutifully did his maths work, occasionally gnawing at the rubber on the end of his pencil when he was working out a particularly puzzling problem. But when he had finished and become rather bored, he decided to take a better look around the room. There wasn’t anything interesting lying about the floor like Merlin might have hoped, but by then he’d spotted a familiar PG Tips bag in a high-up cabinet.

Merlin had a most brilliant idea, he thought, to make his mum a cuppa, as she’d always found a good, strong cup of tea soothing. He even thought he could figure out the unfamiliar tea kettle, already having learned how to use the one back at home.

There was only one flaw in his clever plan - that he’d accounted for, anyway. He hadn’t yet considered how he would get a cup of tea to his mother, seeing as he didn’t actually know where she had gone. The cabinet  _was_ relatively high up, and Merlin, being but six years old, had not yet grown tall enough to reach it. Merlin contemplated this problem for a moment before he came to the conclusion that it could be easily resolved.

He planted his hands on the counter once he’d removed any obstacles that might hinder his way, and heaved up with all his might onto his feeble limbs. His foot found purchase on the edge of the counter and gave him the leverage he needed to push himself the rest of way up onto the surface, where he knelt panting softly. Merlin grinned at his success and reached into the cabinet to grab what he’d come up for.

And that was when a voice he didn’t recognise called out from behind him.

“Merlin!”

Merlin flinched, his knee slipping out from under him. Before he could fall back over the edge, though, there were big, strong hands - bigger and stronger than even his father’s, was Merlin’s first thought - gripping him beneath his arms and hauling him back up until he was sat proper, legs dangling over the ledge.

A man Merlin didn’t know patted his shoulders, twice, before stepping back. “All right?”

Merlin, for his part, was a bit dazed, and he stared foolishly. The man had the blondest hair Merlin had ever seen, and his eyes were so blue he didn’t think he could ever forget the shade now that he’d seen it. He was a big man, but not the biggest Merlin had ever met. Yet he still seemed to dwarf Merlin when he stood there like that, arms crossed over his chest and legs spread shoulder-width.

“Yes,” Merlin mumbled after a moment - his mum taught him it was rude to ignore people - but then he demanded, “How do you know my name?” because his mum also said he shouldn’t talk to strange men, and Merlin rather thought this man was a bit strange.

The man grinned so wide Merlin was sure he could see his gums. “Suspicious little guy, aren’t you?” he asked, but it didn’t appear he expected an answer, which was probably for the best since Merlin wasn’t entirely certain what he meant by ‘suspicious’. “Hunith’s your mother, isn’t she? She sent me here to check on you. Good thing she did, too.”

“You know my mum?” Merlin asked, choosing to ignore the last part of the man’s statement. If his mum had sent this man to check on him, then surely he couldn’t be too strange. Merlin hoped this was true because for some reason he  _wanted_  to talk to him.

“Sure I do.”

Merlin nodded, like that was what he’d expected all along. “What’s your name?”

The man grinned even wider, if that were possible. “Arthur Pendragon.”

“What kind of last name is Pendragon?” Merlin asked immediately.

“What kind of first name is Merlin?” Arthur fired back.

Merlin almost gaped. He was picked on for his name all the time, but he didn’t think that was what Arthur was doing. If anything, his eyes gleamed in amusement and not out of any desire to be cruel. He said the words like he’d said them before, many times, and Merlin wondered if he indeed knew other Merlins, although he hoped not. Merlin wanted to be special, and not just for the odd happenings that sometimes transpired around him - as Arthur didn’t know about those… yet.

“How old are you?”

A funny laugh escaped Arthur’s mouth, as if it had been startled out of him. “Tactless as ever, I see. I’m twenty-three.”

Merlin mulled this over, trying to figure out in his head how much older that meant Arthur was than himself, but he didn’t quite manage it. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh. And how about you? How old are you, Merlin?”

“Six,” Merlin said proudly. He’d only turned six years old two months ago, but he still felt much bigger than he had when he’d been just five.

“Right, of course. He’d said something about an incident with a counter and silly little boys.” Arthur spoke like he was talking to himself.

“I’m not silly!” Merlin protested instantly, despite being unsure of Arthur’s words. Then, “Who said that?”

For a moment, Arthur’s grin dimmed, and he looked a little sad. This made Merlin exceedingly uncomfortable and he wasn’t sure what to do. He was about to offer him a hug, even if that probably would be a bit weird, because that was what his mum did for him when he was upset, but then Arthur’s smile was back in full force, and he was gazing fondly at Merlin.

“No one,” he said quickly. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Merlin’s face screwed up in bewilderment. “Why won’t I understand now?”

“So full of questions today, aren’t we, Merlin? No different from usual, then.”

Arthur kept saying the strangest things. He acted as though he was already well-acquainted with Merlin, and while Merlin quite liked it, he didn’t always know how to respond. He just smiled and hoped he didn’t come across as too dim-witted - a word he’d heard his father use in abundance when he was annoyed and ranting to his mum about it whilst Merlin was in the room.

Merlin only stared quizzically at Arthur for a moment, and then Arthur’s gaze shifted to the right of Merlin’s shoulder. He asked, “What were you doing up there?”

Merlin lowered his eyes tellingly and bit his bottom lip, his teeth catching on a dry patch of skin and pulling. He hadn’t been doing anything naughty, Merlin reminded himself, he’d just wanted to do something nice for his mum because he thought maybe she was having a bit of a bad day. He remembered her telling him that everyone had bad days now and then, when he’d been in an especially poor mood and couldn’t even tell her why because he didn’t know himself. You just have to find the good in those bad days, she’d said. And then it won’t seem so terrible.

He wondered, perhaps a bit arbitrarily, if Arthur ever felt that way. If he ever had bad days, if he ever found something good in them. What that good thing was.

The thought was cursory at best, there one second and gone the next, and then Merlin was saying, “I was gonna make my mum a cup of tea. We’ve got this kind at our house,” as if by way of explanation. He pointed over his shoulder to the PG Tips bag.

“Do you now?” Arthur’s eyebrow had lifted. Merlin wasn’t able to understand the meaning in his look, but that was all right. Maybe he’d  _understand when he was older_. “That’s very… kind of you, Merlin.”

Heat rushed up the back of Merlin’s neck and surely stained the plump of his cheeks an unflattering scarlet. He lifted his head, his lips twisted into what he hoped was a scowl but more likely appeared as a pout to Arthur. “No,” he muttered, just for the sake of mulishness. “It was stupid. I don’t even know where she is.”

Now Arthur seemed to be the one out of his depth. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and shifted his feet around for a bit, awkward. But then his shoulders straightened from where they’d been curling in towards his body and he forged ahead with a gallant gleam in his eyes and a smirk playing on his lips. The transformation absolutely fascinated Merlin. One moment Arthur was like one of those teenagers he saw walking home from school some days, hunched in on themselves with their headphones fitted over their ears, and the next he was like a knight charging into battle with a glimmering sword gripped in his fist and calculated grin pulling up his lips, like it was a game he’d already played out the moves to in his head, like he already knew the outcome. Like it was always,  _always_  in his favour.

Merlin was giddy with the thought that he might be apart of it now, this game Arthur was playing.

“That’s all right. I’d help you find her, all you need do is ask.” Arthur said the words in a way that made Merlin think Arthur wanted him apart of the game as well, on his team even, and not just like he was trying to humour Merlin. He hated it when adults did that, as if them interacting with him in any way was nothing more than a service they were so  _kindly_ granting him.

“Okay,” he said with a smile of his own. “Would you  _graciously_ help me find my mother so I can bring her a cuppa, please?” He batted his eyelashes like he’d seen the girls at his school do when they wanted something.

“Cheeky,” Arthur grumbled, but he was grinning when he ruffled Merlin’s hair, the action as familiar as if he’d done it a thousand times before. “But I suppose. I think I might even help you set this up.” Arthur grabbed the tea kettle and the top paper cup from a pile of them pushed back against the wall. They got to work, amiably ribbing each other at every opportunity that presented itself.

Merlin was grinning madly by the time he hopped down from the counter, after having refused Arthur’s assistance - “I’m not a  _baby_ , Arthur.” He’d never had so much fun chatting with an adult - not even his own mum, really.

Arthur  _did_ help Merlin find his mum, but he didn’t go with Merlin to bring her the tea. Instead he patted Merlin on the back saying he had to get back to work and left with a promise that they’d hang out again if Merlin ever came back.

A sense of disappointment settled in Merlin’s belly as he watched Arthur leave, but he would just have to look forward to the next time he saw Arthur - as, of course, there had to be a next time.

With that in mind he strutted to where his mum sat talking on the phone, a lightness in his chest that hadn’t been there before.


End file.
